Page 29 - JWP 120122

Malayan Tapir Roadkill in Peninsular Malaysia from 2006 to 2019 21
21
Malayan Tapir Roadkill in Peninsular Malaysia from 2006 to 2019

Forests isolated due to road construction have decreased terrestrial mammal
species due to the lower vegetation complexity (Bernard et al., 2014). Population
decline and isolation are also consequences of habitat fragmentation (Bennett &
Saunders, 2011). Gibson et al. (2013) estimated that in 13.9 years, half of the
resident species of small mammals disappeared from the study area, i.e. islands
emerging following land inundation from the construction of dams. Apart from
losing corridors for connectivity, forest fragmentations facilitate hunters to
encroach on wildlife habitats for hunting (Clement et al., 2014; Broadbent et al.,
2012). The threats to wildlife are greater in forests nearer to roads than forest in
the interiors (Clement et al., 2018).

The Malayan tapir is one of the four recognised tapir species found in Asia
(Francis, 2019) and listed under Schedule 2 (totally protected) in the Wildlife
Conservation Act 2010. It is listed as “Endangered” by the International Union
for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (Traeholt et al., 2016).
This species’ existence is threatened by habitat loss and forest fragmentation
(Kinnaird et al., 2003; Rayan et al., 2012; Clements et al., 2012, Magintan et al.,
2012). This species is important to the forest ecosystem as dispersal agents for
plants with small seeds (Campos-Arceiz et al., 2012).

This study presents the temporal and spatial patterns of roadkill occurrence in
Peninsular Malaysia for Malayan tapir. There is limited study of wildlife roadkill
occurrences in Malaysia. Monge-Najera (2018), in his review paper on roadkill,
found only one article about wildlife roadkill in Malaysia. Roadkill articles on
wildlife of Peninsular Malaysia are hardly found in a scientific journal. Such
information is usually in the form of monthly or annual reports. In the last five
years, two articles were published on wildlife roadkill occurrences in Peninsular
Malaysia, namely Mohd-Zahid et al. (2017) and Kasmuri et al. (2020). The former
article detailed leopard cat roadkill incidents in the exterior wildlife reserve in
Pahang, while the latter analysed the roadkill data recorded by PERHILITAN
from 2012 to 2017 to identify mitigation measures based on the outcome of the
analysis. This present study endeavours to quantify and assess spatial and
temporal patterns of Malayan tapir roadkill using records from the Department
of Wildlife and National Parks, Peninsular Malaysia.

METHODOLOGY

All roadkill data used in this study were recorded by the PERHILITAN from 2006
to 2019 throughout Peninsular Malaysia. We sorted records according to month,
year and state. We split annual records into two seasonal categories, namely “wet
season” (October-March) and “dry season” (April-September). T- test analysis
was used to compare the means of dry and wet seasons.